A wide variety of ceramics are, owing to their specific materials properties, being employed to an ever greater extent in mechanical engineering and in the motor vehicle sector, the chemicals sector, the electronics sector, in the consumer sector and also generally in microsystem and process engineering. For high strength and reliability of this class of materials, defect-free microstructures are advantageous. In the automobile sector in particular, it can be particularly advantageous to be able to produce components having tight tolerances at low cost virtually without final machining.
Components having functional integration are being increasingly provided. This means that specific functional layers, e.g. heaters, electrodes or conductor tracks, for example, are implemented in an injection-molded component. The application of the functional layers can advantageously take place directly during shaping. Materials mixtures or systems for injection molding, in particular ceramic injection molding, at present consist of mixtures containing polymers and wax-based constituents. Although such systems can sometimes have good rheological properties during injection molding, joining seams may arise at divisions of streams. Joining seams can represent weak points in the microstructure, and they are therefore advantageously avoided in the case of very high stresses.
For example, joining technology of sensors often requires insulating components which can be positioned, for example, between the sensor element and components forming the housing. The task of these components is, in particular, decoupling of the actual sensor element from an electrically conductive housing so that signal stability is ensured over the life of the sensor. A high insulation quality is therefore desirable.
The document EP 0 180 230 A1 discloses a process for producing a polycrystalline body comprising a zirconium phase and a cordierite phase.
The document DE 10 2008 054 631 A1 describes a process for producing a measuring element, in particular for use in gas measurement sensors, for example lambda sensors, nitrogen oxide sensors and temperature measurement sensors.
The document DE 2 326 086 A1 describes an electrochemical measurement sensor for determining the oxygen content in offgases, in particular in exhaust gases from internal combustion engines.
Furthermore, the document DE 199 37 163 A1 discloses a screen printing paste for the manufacture of planar ceramic elements, in particular for the manufacture of a sensor element.